Entering Cultural Communities

Diversity and Change in the Nonprofit Arts

Edited by Diane Grams and Betty Farrell

Publication Year: 2008

Arts organizations once sought patrons primarily from among the wealthy and well educated, but for many decades now they have revised their goals as they seek to broaden their audiences. Today, museums, orchestras, dance companies, theaters, and community cultural centers try to involve a variety of people in the arts. They strive to attract a more racially and ethnically diverse group of people, those from a broader range of economic backgrounds, new immigrants, families, and youth.The chapters in this book draw on interviews with leaders, staff, volunteers, and audience members from eighty-five nonprofit cultural organizations to explore how they are trying to increase participation and the extent to which they have been successful. The insiders' accounts point to the opportunities and challenges involved in such efforts, from the reinvention of programs and creation of new activities, to the addition of new departments and staff dynamics, to partnerships with new groups. The authors differentiate between "relational" and "transactional" practices, the former term describing efforts to build connections with local communities and the latter describing efforts to create new consumer markets for cultural products. In both cases, arts leaders report that, although positive results are difficult to measure conclusively, long-term efforts bring better outcomes than short-term activities.The organizations discussed include large, medium, and small nonprofits located in urban, suburban, and rural areasùfrom large institutions such as the Smithsonian, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the San Francisco Symphony to many cultural organizations that are smaller, but often known nationally for their innovative work, such as AS220, The Loft Literary Center, Armory Center for the Arts, Appalshop, and the Western Folklife Center.

Contents

Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Th is book would not have been possible without the support and involvement
of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago and the
ongoing support of the Center by the Irving Harris Foundation. As a joint
initiative of the Irving B. Harris...

Introduction

It takes more than a building, good art, or an interesting program to attract
people to the arts. In fact, the adage “if you build it they will come”
might make a good storyline for a movie, but it doesn’t describe how
people are drawn to participate in the arts. It takes much more than the
awesome sight of a majestic...

Chapter 1: Building Arts Participation through Transactions, Relationships, or Both

Arts organizations today find themselves in a dilemma. The artistic mission
essentially involves a long-term proposition: that is, to make an
important and lasting contribution to the creation and preservation of
culture. Yet participation-building...

Chapter 2: Changing Culture and Practices Inside Organizations

All organizations that are launching efforts to develop new customer/
audience relationships and new levels of participation—whether by deepening
the experience of current audiences or by expanding the organization’s
reach to...

Chapter 3: Leaders Bridging the Culture Gap

As arts organizations large and small seek to increase the size and diversity
of their audiences, they discover not only gaps in their rosters of enlisted
supporters but something much more substantial: a culture gap. This is
the difference between...

Chapter 4: Partnering with Purpose

Like most businesses large and small operating in today’s global economy,
arts organizations are increasingly seeking to engage in arrangements that
include alliances and joint ventures, formal partnerships, and informal
collaborations....

Chapter 5: Building Youth Participation

“It’s modern, unpredictable, fun, eclectic.” If this describes your cultural
organization, you may already have a sizable audience of youthful
participants. For many, however, attracting teenagers or families with
young children or even..

It is not only the young who are the new audience members for the future,
but a more racially and ethnically diverse range of adults who have not
been significantly visible in the audiences for mainstream arts. For most
of U.S. history, the...

Chapter 7: High-Tech Transactions and Cyber-Communities

Many nonprofit arts organizations have entered the information age by
doing what they do best: experimenting. However, they may not anticipate
that their efforts to use new technology as tools to build participation
have the potential to...

Chapter 8: Creative Reinvention: From “One Book” to “Animals on Parade”--How Good Ideas Spread Like Wildfire

New efforts to build relationships among organizations have led to the creation
of an organizational context that encourages program sharing and
reinvention. Reinvention is a programming concept that seeks to stimulate
exponential expansion of participation outside of a single organizational
boundary through...

Chapter 9: Achieving Success

Success comes in many, many ways. Success is when our publications
become text books in art history classes. Or success is when
exhibitions we organize travel around the world, so that something
like 3.3 million people [outside of Minnesota] have seen Walker exhibitions...

Postscript

Leading nonprofit arts organizations throughout the United States are creatively
finding ways to involve a broader range of participants, consumers,
and partners from their local communities. These leaders are strategically
reaching...

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